Incense Ceremonies: Africa

Few commodities have shaped a coastline as frankincense has shaped that of present-day Somalia and northeastern Ethiopia. Boswellia sacra grows there on barren, almost vegetation-free limestone slopes, often straight out of the rock — a frugal, stubborn tree that thrives precisely where almost nothing else does. It is harvested through deliberate cuts in the bark, from which a milky sap emerges that hardens in the air into the amber-colored ‘tears’ known in trade as frankincense.

Trade in this resin reaches back at least to the third millennium before our era: Egyptian expeditions to the legendary ‘Land of Punt’ — likely located on the coast of present-day Somalia or Eritrea — brought back frankincense, myrrh, and even whole frankincense trees with their root balls, as reliefs in Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari record. For millennia the Horn of Africa region, together with the Hadramaut of southern Arabia across the Gulf of Aden, remained a nearly unrivaled source for the resin burned in Jerusalem, in Rome, and later in every Catholic mass.

Today Somali and Ethiopian frankincense compete chiefly with resin from Oman for the reputation of highest quality — both regions point to millennia of experience, and both face the same problems: overharvesting, political instability in the harvesting areas, and a growing global demand that puts pressure on traditional, often nomadically organized harvesting communities. Studies in recent years have warned that some Boswellia populations could decline significantly within a few decades if harvest pressure continues unchanged.

Further south, in present-day Sudan, an entirely different, body-centered incense tradition exists: dukhan, the ‘smoke bath’. In this practice, tied above all to weddings, the bride — traditionally prepared for days beforehand with oils, scrubs and fragrant substances — crouches over a pit of glowing coals onto which aromatic sandalwood, sometimes mixed with resins and spices, is scattered, wrapped in a cloth that holds the smoke against the body. The smoke penetrates skin and hair so thoroughly that the scent lingers for days — a ritual closely tied to purity, transition and female identity, also practiced in slightly altered form outside of weddings.

In Ethiopia, meanwhile, incense is inseparable from the coffee ceremony: before the freshly roasted coffee is brewed, frankincense or another resin is often burned on a small charcoal brazier right beside the jebena, the traditional clay pot — the smoke serves as a gesture of welcome to guests and as a fixed part of a ritual that often lasts a full hour and carries far more social than culinary weight.

In southern Africa, meanwhile, among the traditional healers and diviners known as sangoma in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and neighboring countries, burning imphepho (Helichrysum species, related to the European curry plant) serves to invite the ancestors — amadlozi — to a ceremony: the characteristic smoke, reminiscent of curry and dry hay, is held to be a bridge between the living and the dead, and few sangoma sessions begin without it.

What unites these very different practices is the close weave of scent with transitions: the passage from raw harvest to sacred material in the case of the frankincense trade, from girl to wife in dukhan, from stranger to guest in the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, from the living to the ancestors among the sangoma. African incense practice, however differently it plays out from region to region, marks almost without exception a threshold moment — not everyday life itself, but the moment something changes.